Have you ever had one of those days when you can’t quite decide where to go? I had just that experience in Somerset earlier this month and my solution was to open up Google maps and see what jumped out at me. AS luck would have it, this led me to rediscover a pin I’d dropped in the app last year marking St Audrie’s Bay as somewhere I should visit - problem solved!
My reason for saving the location was the waterfall which tumbles off the cliffs there. I’d seen photos which had piqued my interest so I parked up at the caravan part on top of the cliffs and began picking my way down the steep path to the beach. It’s a private beach, but the owners of the caravan park don’t mind welcoming visitors and on this winter morning I pretty much had the place to myself.
The only access from above is a rocky pathway down the side of the cliffs so I was amazed to find a lot of man made structures (albeit in an extreme state of weathering) dotted along the beach. I can only assume the raw materials must have been brought in by boat many decades ago in a futile attempt to tame the sea.
The waterfall comes from a stream which runs down the hillside and simply falls over the edge to the beach below. During the summer months it often disappears entirely, but the recent rain ensured a steady flow of water, which I made the most of in my pinhole photos.
The beach was riven with streams of water, heading for the sea, so I was very pleased I’d put my wellies in the car. To get this photo I was sitting on a small man-made stone wall with my feet in a stream, while shooting in the opposite direction across a rock pool - I couldn’t have done that if I’d be wearing shoes!
I was fascinated by the rock strata breaking through the beach - a very visible glimpse into the way the earth’s crust is pushed and pulled by the forces beneath.
This may look like a deep chasm, but it’s only about 4 inches deep - the magic of getting down really low and really close with a pinhole camera!
I’d brought my large format pinhole camera along too, which gave me a different perspective on the beach’s features, both natural and manmade.
Photos taken 3 February 2023